Stephen King is such a successful writer he has reached the point where he embraces his
quirks and doesn’t care who notices. He has two obvious ones: Loving the sound
of his own voice and forcing his fringe political views on his characters. Joyland
avoids the former.
Joyland
is a Hard Case Crime book (never read a bad one) that packs a wallop. Dev is
working at the Joyland amusement park in summer 1974 between college semesters.
He becomes friends with Mike, a kid dying from MD, and his sexy single mom. He
also finds the ghost of a murdered girl in the funhouse. The book is fairly
short and tightly written and plotted; it’s King at his absolute best. He is
incredibly talented at putting us in the character’s shoes and making his
characters come alive as people without a wasted word. We care about little Mikey and fear for his
safety. We love that Dev has a crush on Mike’s mom. There’s a murder mystery
too, about finding the killer of the funhouse ghost.
While
Joyland is a great overall read, the ending isn’t. Writing the story in his old
age, the protagonist, out of the blue, rants on about why so many good people
have died in his lifetime while Dick Chaney gets a new heart and keeps on
living. It really jarred me out of the story and made me dislike King’s
antagonism. If that's how King feels, fine. But does he really have to wish a
specific person dead because he doesn't agree with them politically? That’s a
nasty, unnecessary thing to do and takes the book from five star rating down to three, at best. Great
story, awful ending.
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